A lot of bad analysis and outright false claims are being circulated about unemployment in North Carolina and recent cuts in the state’s unemployment benefits that are hurting workers and their families.

If a person is unemployed, moves to another state and applies for unemployment insurance, the benefits would be paid by the state where his or her former employer was located. To suggest, as Gov. McCrory did recently, that unemployed people were flocking to North Carolina to collect benefits from the state reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how unemployment insurance works.

The drop in North Carolina’s unemployment rate is largely due to people leaving the labor force, not the cut in unemployment benefits.

As we have noted elsewhere, as have numerous well-respected economists here, here and here, the superficial improvement in the state’s unemployment rate is not signaling a much-improved level of employment. Rather, the unemployment rate is dropping largely because many jobless North Carolinians have stopped looking for work, shrinking the state’s overall labor force. Why? There are simply not enough jobs for those who want to work. And that is happening while the working-age population is growing.

Moreover, employers will be contributing far less to the unemployment insurance fund over time than they would have under previous law, putting the system at potential risk when another downturn happens.

Lawmakers could have taken other steps to address NC’s unemployment insurance debt without harming unemployed workers and their families.

Instead, legislators chose to reduce the debt largely by cutting benefits. Nearly 75 percent of the “savings” under this new law will come from benefit changes, while just 22 percent will come from state and federal tax changes.

It’s time to stop trying to justify bad decisions that hurt workers and their families with bad analysis. We can debate policy choices, but let’s all agree that there are facts that cannot be disputed.